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A Midsummer Night's Dream
''A Midsummer Night's Dream ''by William Shakespeare is a play about 4 lovers (Lysander, Hermia, Helena, and Demetrius) who run away into the woods, only to be discovered by the fairy court and have their lives magically affected by them through love drops that are meant to make the pairs all be evenly in love with each other (as before, the two men were in love with one of the women, while each woman loved one of the men in return, so the King fairy Oberon decides to make the unloved woman's unrequited love be returned). Oberon also has Puck, a fairy trickster and his servant enchant Queen Titania to fall in love with the first thing she sees when she wakes up after the application of the potion. Puck successfully applies the potion to the Queen, but fails when delivering it to the humans, enchanting the wrong man, so that everyone is now in love with the one of the opposite sex who does not love them back. There is also a performance troop in the woods that Puck wreaks havoc on by causing one of the performers to have the head of a donkey. When Queen Titania awakes, the donkey headed man is the first thing she sees and she becomes completely enamoured with him, much to King Oberon's amusement. However, when Oberon realizes that Puck has botched the delivery of the potion to the humans, he becomes much less amused and attempts to correct the mistake himself, delivering the love potion to the correct man to make both the men in love with the previously unloved girl. She believes it to all be a cruel joke and Oberon realizes that he must end his sport. He puts all of the humans in an enchanted sleep and gives the antidote to the man that Puck had mistakenly given the love potion, making the four lovers into two happy pairs. Oberon then gives the antidote to Titania and they reconcile, and all of the humans leave the woods and they get married with the performance troop performing at their wedding. Meaning A Midsummer's Night Dream has many meanings, from warnings about the darkness and fickleness of love to the dangers of losing one's identity while on love. While the plot of this play is not of particular importance, the portrayals of certain characters and their relationships are. Puck is the character from this play of main importance to The Sisters Grimm series, and he is largely portrayed as simply a childish trickster who is servant to King Oberon. King Oberon is seen as a potentially cruel and unworthy king, as a simple spat with his wife caused him to curse her and potentially damage the lives of many other characters, but he does have goodness in him, as he reverses all he has done when he sees the negative effects they have caused. Titania is seen mainly as being a Queen who is willing to fight for those she sees as her children and who loves her husband enough to forgive him most anything. The characters of Moth, Mustardseed, and Cobweb are seen mainly just as fairies that are loyal to Queen Titania. The Sisters Grimm In The Sisters Grimm, Puck is the definite main character of all the fairies in the story, already creating a bit of a rift as he had previously shared that role with Oberon. At the beginning, Puck is seen as mostly exactly the same as he is in A Midsummer Night's Dream, but by the end of the book series, Puck's love for Sabrina have caused him to grow up, both physically and mentally. In the play, Puck is also only said to be a servant of Oberon, while he is his son in the books, which could be a discrepancy, but it is also mentioned in the play that Oberon wanted the child that Titania was trying to adopt to be his henchman, so it is very likely that Puck was actually of some relation to him before he became his servant in the play. Their relationship is still very similar however, with Oberon being unfairly critical of Puck and harsh in his reprimands. Oberon is also seen as very similar to himself in the play, as he is the king of Fairie, but the people have gotten tired of his antics and he is left frantically grasping to keep his power until his death. Titania is seen as very similar as well, becoming inconsolable with grief when Oberon passes, despite the fact that they were once again fighting, and going on a murderous rampage to protect her son. The other fairy characters of Cobweb, Moth, and Mustardseed are much larger characters in the book than the play, and there is not much to compare them to from the source material, but it does fit that Moth would be the one to kill Oberon, as she was always more loyal to Titania, as with Cobweb, so it also makes sense that he would be the one originally framed for the crime. Again with Mustardseed, his favor was also towards Titania, so it also adds up that in the books he is her son and protects her as best he can. All in all, much of the message has not changed through the different tellings of Shakespeare and Buckley, except for that of Puck. Puck changes from a symbol of childishness and immaturity, to a young man in love who potentially takes on the responsibility of king, showing that love really can affect anyone. Buckley also adds the characters Tony Fats and Bobby Screwball, two fairy godfathers, possibly to show the effects of class imposed by Oberon on the kingdom, as fairy-godfathers are considered to be less than fairies. Characters * Theseus (In A Midsummer Night's Dream) * Egeus (In A Midsummer Night's Dream) * Lysander (In A Midsummer Night's Dream) * Demetrius (In A Midsummer Night's Dream) * Philosrate (In A Midsummer Night's Dream) * Quince (In A Midsummer Night's Dream) * Snug (In A Midsummer Night's Dream) * Bottom (In A Midsummer Night's Dream) * Flute (In A Midsummer Night's Dream) * Snout (In A Midsummer Night's Dream) * Starveling (In A Midsummer Night's Dream) * Hippolyta (In A Midsummer Night's Dream) * Hermia (In A Midsummer Night's Dream) * Helena (In A Midsummer Night's Dream) * Oberon * Titania * Puck * Peaseblossom (In A Midsummer Night's Dream) * Cobweb * Moth * Mustardseed * Tony Fats (In The Sisters Grimm) * Bobby Screwball (In The Sisters Grimm)